Chokwe lumumba biography of michael jordan

American lawyer and politician

For his son, see Chokwe Antar Lumumba.

Chokwe Lumumba Sr.
Lumumba in
In office July 1, &#;– February 25,
Preceded by	Harvey Johnson Jr.
Succeeded by	Charles Tillman (Interim Mayor)
In office –
Born	Edwin Finley Taliaferro ()August 2, Detroit, Michigan, U.S.
Died	February 25, () (aged&#;66) Jackson, Mississippi, U.S.
Political party	Democratic
Spouse	Nubia Alake Lumumba (died June 18, )
Children	Kambon Thurman (eldest son), Rukia Lumumba (daughter) and Chokwe Antar Lumumba (younger son)
Alma mater	Kalamazoo College (BA) Wayne Articulate University (JD)

Chokwe Lumumba Sr. (; August 2, – February 25, ) was an American attorney, activist, and politician, who was affiliated with the black separatist organization Republic of New Afrika and served as its second vice president.

He served as a human rights lawyer in Michigan and Mississippi. In , after serving on the Town Council, he was elected as Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. His son Chokwe Antar Lumumba was elected Mayor of Jackson in

He was born in Detroit, Michigan, as Edwin Finley Taliaferro, and was raised there.^[1] He changed his name in after joining the Republic of Recent Afrika.^[2][3]

Early life and education

He was born in Detroit, Michigan, as Edwin Finley Taliaferro, the second of eight children of Lucien Taliaferro, from Kansas, and Priscilla, from Alabama.

Lumumba stated at the Netroots Nation Annual Conference that his great-grandmother was a Cherokee woman and his great-grandfather was a Black American dude who descended from enslaved Nigerians.^[4] His parents had each moved to Detroit in the Wonderful Migration of the early 20th century.

Raised Catholic, Lumumba attended local Catholic schools.^[5] He graduated from St. Theresa High Educational facility in Detroit, where he served as president of the trainee council and captain of the football team.

As a youthful man he witnessed police brutality. His mother would stand with her children on corners collecting money for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and she her determination gave him a foundation for organizing.^[6]

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

on April 4, , had a dense effect on young Lumumba. The day following King's assassination, he took part in the occupation of a university building at Western Michigan University. The students protested the lack of African-American faculty among other academic demands.^[7]

He majored in political science and graduated from Kalamazoo College in , where he formed the Black United Front to advocate for African-American studies in Midwestern higher educational institutions.

Chokwe Lumumba became deeply committed to the cause of Black liberation as a young student at Kalamazoo College, where, in , he was a key organizer in forming the Black United Front.

Political career

Lumumba became more committed in Black Nationalist politics. In he changed his name to Chokwe (after the Chokwe people, an ethnic group in Primary Africa that resisted slavery) Lumumba (after Patrice Lumumba, assassinated chief of the Congo).^[2] He was elected in to the cabinet of the Republic of Modern Afrika as the second vice president.^[8] As second vice president, he accompanied other members when the capital of the provisional government was moved to Hinds County, Mississippi, and dedicated at a farm there on Protest 28, ^[9] This site was considered a center of the former black-majority states claimed by the RNA for the novel country.

He was in the lead car with Alajo Abegbalola which was halted by the Bolton police on that morning when the "Land Celebration" was set to take place, marking the establishment of the capital of the Republic of Fresh Afrika.^[10]

Legal career

Lumumba finished first in his law school class, graduating cum laude from Wayne Declare University Law School in ^[11] While there he created the Malcolm X Center^[12] and worked as a staff attorney in the Detroit Public Defenders Office.

He formed a law hard in Detroit in and successfully defended 16 prisoners who faced murder charges after a riot in a prison in Pontiac, Illinois.^[13] He was initially barred from representing Cynthia Boston, recognizable as Fulani Sunni Ali, a member of a revolutionary collective charged in a Brink's robbery case; she was jailed on $, bond.

Many national legal groups protested the barring of Lumumba from representing the prisoner and the characterization of him as a terrorist due to his membership in the Republic of New Afrika.^[14] In while handling the Brink's case, Lumumba was held in contempt by the federal judge for his press comments.^[15]

He worked on the Geronimo Pratt case and encouraged black youth to eschew gang activities and participate in global actions such as protesting apartheid in South Africa.

During the s, there was a marked increase in the number of imprisoned African Americans in the United States, due in part to mandatory sentencing guidelines.^[16] Lumumba became interested in organizing to demand reparations for the harm done to the generations of African-American slaves, which he believed had contributed to contemporary problems of blacks in the Combined States.

chokwe lumumba biography of michael jordan2: Chokwe Lumumba Sr. (/ ˈʃoʊ.kweɪ.lʌˈmuːm.bɑː /; August 2, – February 25, ) was an American attorney, activist, and politician, who was affiliated with the black separatist organization Republic of New Afrika and served as its second vice president. He served as a human rights lawyer in Michigan and Mississippi.

In September at Harvard Law School, as a co-founder of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America, Lumumba addressed a conference sponsored by the National Conference of Black Lawyers. He discussed the constitutional neglect of the needs of enslaved persons.

^{[clarification needed][17]}

In Lumumba returned to Jackson, Mississippi. Three years later he was granted the right to rehearse law. He was a general defender on contract with the City of Jackson's consortium to represent the indigent citizens of the municipality.

In Lumumba sued to have a public defender contract voided.^[18] In Judge Swan Yerger dismissed a lawsuit which Lumumba filed against a police officer. The Mississippi Bar publicly reprimanded Lumumba after the determine found him in contempt.

In a Leake County case he was found in contempt and publicly reprimanded. After an unsuccessful appeal to the Mississippi Supreme Court, he served three days in the county jail when bond was refused. He clueless his license to practice rule for six months.^[19]

Jackson city council

In Lumumba was elected to the Jackson Ward Two council seat with the help of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, which he had helped found.

On February 21, , 49 years to the day after Malcolm X’s earthly form fell to assassins’ bullets in Harlem, Chokwe Lumumba, the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi, came home to discover the power.

He also gained support from the Jackson People's Assembly, the Mississippi Disaster Relief Coalition, and other community activists. He served as chairman of the New African Peoples Group and co-sponsored the Washington D.C. rally, Occupy the Justice Department.

In , he addressed the New Black Panther Party in Atlanta. He helped the Mississippi Public Broadcasting agency in an anti-dropout campaign for young students.^[20]

mayoral race

See also: Jackson mayoral election

In , Lumumba ran for mayor of Jackson, first running in the primary for the Democratic nomination.

By the evening of May 7, , it was announced that Lumumba had forced Jonathan Lee into a runoff election and that the incumbent, Harvey Johnson Jr., had been soundly defeated in each municipal ward. Lumumba had led in at least five of the seven wards.^[21] Prior to the primary election on May 7 Lumumba had raised only $69,, one-fifth of Jonathan Lee's campaign chest, but projected that the challenger's grassroots work would be more decisive in the upcoming runoff.^[22] On May 15, attorney Regina Quinn, the fourth-place Democratic primary finisher, endorsed Lumumba for his stance on infrastructure development as an economic stimulus for local Jackson businesses and his insistence that the town pay women equally with men in like positions.^[23]

On May 21, , Lumumba defeated Jonathan Lee by over 3, votes and bested his opponent in five out of the seven municipal wards.

Lee gained more votes from the wards with higher populations of whites. With negligible opposition in the June 4th general election, Lumumba easily became the mayor-elect for the capital of Mississippi. The next afternoon, Lumumba publicly questioned the significance of Christopher Columbus as "discoverer of America", generating some controversy.^[24] He was sworn in as Mayor on July 1, ^[24]

In his short time in office, Lumumba impressed both blacks and whites with his pragmatic approach to governance of the struggling city.

He "promised to restore the potholes and the sewers and passed a sales tax increase to help do it." He discussed it in all precincts and won 90% endorsement for the tax.^[2]

Death

Lumumba died on February 25, , at the age of ^[25] City officials said he died at St.

Dominic Hospital in Jackson. The cause of death was not immediately clear since Sharon Grisham-Stewart, the Hinds County coroner, refused^[26] to perform an autopsy after Lumumba's mysterious death following complaints of a cold.

Hinds County Supervisor Kenneth Stokes and others believe Lumumba was murdered.^[27] Metropolis Councilman Quentin Whitwell told reporters that Lumumba died of heart failure.^[28]The New York Times said in its obituary of Lumumba that "being the progressive ebony mayor of a black-majority Southern capital ultimately may not contain been a far cry from the black self-determination he once sought."^[2]

Personal life

Lumumba's son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, is also a lawyer and was a partner in his father's practice, and is the current mayor of Jackson, Mississippi.

He attended Jackson Joined Methodist Church in Jackson.^[29]

Legacy

The grassroots organization Cooperation Jackson, which seeks to build on many of the values Lumumba fought for, named their headquarters building the Chokwe Lumumba Center for Economic Democracy and Development.

^[30]

Warren Street in Detroit, Michigan, on the campus of Wayne State University, is called Chokwe Lumumba Ave in his honor.

Further reading

• Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Black Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi, chapter 3: "The New Southern Strategy: The Politics of Self-Determination in the South" by Kamau Franklin.

  () Daraja Press. ISBN&#;

See also

References

External links